Eye on Exec

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I generally try to avoid the VUWSA exec like the plague. Having to read Lewis’ fortnightly accounts of the Exec’s hijinks is as close as I like to get.

However when Max Hardy visited the Salient office at 3.55pm on Wednesday to inform us that the meeting would start in five minutes (instead of at the usual 5.30pm), there is not much one can do about it.

So, with Lewis unable to make it to the office in five minutes, I headed downstairs to VUWSA for my first ever Exec Meeting.

And oh, the hilarity that ensued.

The meeting was at first delayed five minutes for James Sleep to clean the table on which the AGM’s giant sandwich had been prepared on. Max offered his apologies.

“Sorry, Molly, VUWSA’s just cleaning the table.”

The meeting then commenced, with the absence of Alan Young (sick), Craig Carey (jilted when Max changed the time) and Marsha Kupriyenko (toilet).

Minutes from the last meeting were not included in the agenda because Bridie Hood’s computer “exploded”, so it was straight on to the exec work reports.

All of these passed with very little trouble, with the exception of Young’s.

Because Young was absent, the exec quizzed Kupriyenko on Young’s recorded 26 hours of work in the last fortnight. Other than a 30 minute exec meeting and two hours at the Student Fees Forum, Richard Carr said it was difficult to see how Young had worked a remaining 23.5 hours, most of which was probably email correspondence. Kupriyenko said Young was “very helpful for Faith Week”, so the exec decided to defer making a decision on his work report, despite Kupriyenko’s request to “just pass it, eh”.

Hardy hadn’t typed up his work report so then proceeded to deliver an oral work report, which he has to type up by Friday—a task he said would be “really hard, but I guess I can do it”.

Hardy took this opportunity to seamlessly segue into his next topic—Orientation 2011. The exec were asked to submit their ideas on how to make a “radical improvement” to orientation, in order to attract a target 4000 students. Ideas thrown around included targeting older and returning students, offering not-so-traditional events and a festival in Kelburn Park that could incorporate Clubs Day and feature performances by New Zealand School of Music students. Cool.

Next up was the exec’s decision of who they would allocate their votes to for the position of Co-President in the upcoming NZUSA elections. Hardy is standing for the role alongside current Co-President David Do and two other student association presidents. The exec debated the credentials of each candidate for 15 minutes before deciding to allocate half of their votes to Do and the others to Hardy. All votes were also allocated to Caitlin Dunham for National Women’s Rights Officer.

The exec voted to continue to oppose VSM and recognised the Science Society as a Representative Group.

Hardy had a bit of trouble with describing the nature of the Science Society, it went a little like this: “So they have a club for science students… students who study science… various sciences at Victoria… students of science… A club for students who study science at Victoria University.”

The meeting ended shortly afterwards at 4.54pm, with Carey arriving just one minute afterwards.

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